As a former employee stated, Lego management demonstrated a lack of discipline, accountability, and a formal costing system. These issues led to frequent stock-outs and slow moving inventory. Responding accordingly, retailers would become stingy with shelf space. Early attempts to resolve these issues actually made matters worse. In 1999, Lego introduced a restructuring program that included cutting costs by $1B DKK, firing a significant number of executives, and laying off approximately 1,000 employees.
CASE ANALYSIS LOBLAW COMPANIES LIMITED: PREPARING FOR WAL-MART SUPERCENTERS MKTG 5571-2 Dr. Gordon Fullerton Minh Pham A00340046 Jan. 23, 2013 1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION Due to the powerful competition from Wal-mart and its recently poor performance, Loblaw was experiencing a plummet in operating income and losing customers’ faith. As a result, its dominant market shares were threatened to shrink. The problem facing the new management team was building a new business plan in order to turn around its business to stay strong in competition and remain the leading position in the market with the three values: Simplify, Innovate and Grow. 2.
During the company’s history from 1987-2006 they experienced above industry growth compared with most of their competitors. However, 2006 was the beginning of troubling times for FoldRite Furniture Company. (Wheelwright and Bellisario, 2012) It was discovered by management that high turnover rates in the manufacturing department lead to slower production and delivery times. These mistakes opened the door for competitors to take business away from the company. In any industry reliability and consistency are key factors to attracting and maintaining repeat customers.
With the loss of Jobs these launching events will no longer be “spectacular”, according to Shalini Verman a principle analyst at Gartner, “This tends to impact the perception of the company among "technology enthusiasts" who will influence consumers' buying behavior over time.” Following in the footsteps of a genius is what Tim Cook has faced in the years since the death of Steve Jobs. His challenge was maintaining the momentum at the most famous and world’s largest technology company, that provided a decade long period of turn around and innovations. Cook indicates that “Some people see innovation as change, but we have never really seen it like that,” Cook told BusinessWeek magazine. “It’s making things better.” Cook understood how important it was to developed the political support, when he found it necessary to fire long time mobile software head Scott Forstall and Apple Store chief John Browett, who he felt was no longer a good fit with the company’s culture. Cook has his own strengths; he has chosen to build a partnership with the Apple talent.
Also, the increase of the debt will reduce the debt to capital ratio which could affect the company’s credit ratings. Another issue to take into considerations is how the consumers will view such a move. Will they be happy to see that the company is trying to meet their needs or will they have short-term memory and just decide to venture into new items on the market? Will the expansion be too late in meeting their needs or will it increase sales income? Also they must take into consideration the effects of the volume increase on their distributors.
As of 6 December 2000, there have been 148 reported deaths and over 500 serious injuries1. It would have been very likely that people would shun Ford and Firestone products from then on due to their perceived danger, which made Ford and Firestone’s management of one of their biggest stakeholders- their customers and the victims of the accidents- extremely important. On the whole, Ford and Firestone’s handling of stakeholder issues were not exemplary. Victims of their faulty products were not properly informed beforehand of the risks, compensation to them was reluctant and mostly delayed, the two companies played the blame game, and many jobs were lost in the process. As such, I feel that Ford and Firestone handled stakeholder issues poorly, and although certain measures were implemented after the incident, I feel that they were insufficient, tardy and unhelpful in regaining customer loyalty.
Multiple divisions were added and then removed from the company and it eventually settled down focusing on what it did best; making mattresses Simmons started experiencing lack of coordination and motivation amongst the employees during its “downfall period”. Instead of working towards a common goal, there was competition amongst the different manufacturing plants. An innovation in cost savings or efficient production procedures discovered by one plant was not shared with the other plants. Moreover, the terrorist attacks of September 11th made the situation for Simmons even worse. U.S. economy suffered greatly after that incident.
Fukushima, the nuclear power plants center, had been one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters regions. Serious damage affected many industries, and it greatly change Japan’s state of macroeconomy from several parts. Exports continued to fall because electronics industry, car industry and food industry that are important portion of Japan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) were seriously damaged. The country accounts for 16.5 percent of that revenue in the consumer electronics industry (“Japan quake”, 2011). Sony, Toshiba, Kyocera, and Canon, are among the many industry heavyweights in the industry headquartered in Japan.
In the service sectors, the cost saving from offshoring enables companies to create new service lines, many of which had been deferred for want of investment. New services increase customer satisfaction and become new revenue streams, as well as growth paths for companies. The geographic nature of offshoring brings its own advantages. It helps the company expand its reach, thereby helping the company grow. This growth mitigates any negative effects of offshoring.
Another possible advantage of privatisation is an increase in competition as the privatisation of state owned monopolies usually occurs at the same time as deregulation of the industry. The increase in competition can be the greatest incentive to improvements in efficiency. For example, there is now more competition in the telecom industry and suppliers are now investing in fibre-optic technology and improving the infrastructure via capital investment. However, privatisation doesn’t necessarily increase the level of competition; it depends on the market structure. For example there is currently no competition in tap water, however this is a widely debated area and we could see a change to this soon and